Cuomo Approval Plummets 15 Points After Toughest U.S. Gun Law

By Freeman Klopott -
Jan 30, 2013

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s
approval rating dropped 15 percentage points from an all-time
high reached last month as Republican voters balked at his
pushing through one of the toughest U.S. gun laws, a poll found.

Fifty-nine percent of voters approved of the 55-year-old
Democrat’s performance in a survey released today by the
Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. Cuomo had a 74 percent
approval rating in a poll on Dec. 12, two days before a gunman
wielding an assault-style rifle killed 20 children and six
adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.

After the massacre, Cuomo began a successful monthlong push
to tighten New York’s assault-rifle ban and reduce the number of
rounds permissible in a magazine to seven from 10. His support
from Republicans dropped to 44 percent in today’s survey from 68
percent. The gun-control package goes too far in restricting
owners’ rights, 34 percent of all voters said, including 59
percent of Republicans.

“New York Governor Andrew Cuomo had the political capital
to spend when he set out to pass the toughest gun control laws
in the nation,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Hamden,
Connecticut school’s Polling Institute. “It is possible that
the gun law cost him some of that political capital, but a 2-1
job approval rating still makes him the envy of most
governors.”

First State

New York was the first state to act on growing calls for
tighter limits on firearms after the killings in Newtown’s Sandy
Hook Elementary School when lawmakers approved the measure Jan.
15. Democratic lawmakers in at least 10 states along with
President Barack Obama are seeking new controls, challenging the
firearms lobby’s clout.

The shooter in Newtown, Adam Lanza, used a Bushmaster
semiautomatic AR-15-style rifle similar to those made at a
Remington Arms Co. plant in Ilion, in upstate New York. Two
weeks later, two firefighters were killed in Webster, near
Rochester, by a 62-year-old man also wielding a Bushmaster.

Cuomo has said the shooting in Webster lowered opposition
among Republicans in the state senate who control the chamber
thanks to the help of six breakaway Democrats. Cuomo’s measure
outlaws the weapon used by Lanza and also allows the state to
seize firearms from mentally ill people deemed to be a threat by
a doctor.

Cuomo was asked during a radio interview yesterday about
the likelihood of his approval rating dropping as a result of
the measure. He said his own surveys of voters as he pushed the
gun law showed support would likely suffer as a result.

“I know they’re going to be displeased,” Cuomo said. “I
would expect that you’re going to see that in the poll. And that
will be that. They will be unhappy.”